


People Learn to Love Their Chains

by EchoResonance



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: M/M, Red String of Fate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 21:26:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5471345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EchoResonance/pseuds/EchoResonance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Freedom isn't a luxury mankind is allowed, not really. We're all bound by something, to someone. However, sometimes the binding is what makes all the difference, and Kanda would take a single thread linking him to Allen over the heavy chains the Order tried to put on him any day</p>
            </blockquote>





	People Learn to Love Their Chains

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt 2 of Yullen week: Liberation

Allen had been talking to Timcanpy. Watching the golem play its memories back to him. Asking about the Noahs. He’d been talking to Timcanpy about a lot of things for quite a while, and he wouldn’t have realized he wasn’t alone in the room if Kanda hadn’t started railing at him for complaining about being cooped up. As was to be expected, the argument quickly escalated like it always did, and even as their volume increased and the insults they threw at each other became more creative, the topic changed so many times that had anybody been watching, they would have no idea what was going on.

“I never even knew a life outside of the Order before a couple of months ago,” Kanda growled. “Don’t you feed me this shit about being trapped, cuz I’m not buying it.”

“You still have a one-up over me, then!” Allen exclaimed, leaping to his feet. “I found out a couple of months ago that _I’m_ not even _me_! That I haven’t made one choice that wasn’t predetermined by my so-called father or my mentor that was apparently knee-deep with the Noahs! I haven’t been free for a second of my life, and I didn’t even know it! At least you got those months! At least you got to choose!”

Kanda blinked, retorts and insults dying in his throat at the tone of his companion’s voice. Allen grit his teeth and looked away, swiping furiously at the tears hanging from his lashes and cursing his inability to remain collected in front of the swordsman. Once he prided himself on hiding his emotions, on refusing to impose on others and being able to brush off their worries and leave them relieved that he was okay. He had lost that pride what felt like centuries ago, lost it right in front of Kanda, he thought. It’s that bastard’s fault, though he wasn’t sure how, that he could never keep a level head if he was in the vicinity.

The display of emotion wasn’t what startled Kanda. No, he was quite used to the Beansprout wearing his heart on his sleeve. What brought him up short was the emotion itself that Allen was doing a very poor job of hiding beneath his supposed anger. Kanda had seen the boy cry in pain and in sadness, had seen him laugh loudly and had seen him set a compassionate hand on many a shoulder. He couldn’t remember hearing fear, not the kind of stark terror that was causing his voice to crack just then.

“Allen…” he said cautiously, rising to his own feet.

His friend twitched, but kept his gaze on the window, from which they could see Johnny talking animatedly with an elderly couple on the street.

“You were free,” Allen mumbled. “You were _free_ , which is something I apparently never was, and God, I envy you that. You finally fulfilled the promise you made to him--to Alma. Why would you give that up?”

Kanda hesitated, eyes flicking around the room, and then sighed and covered the remaining distance to clout Allen over the shoulder. The boy yelped and moved to swing at him, but he caught the fist sailing for his cheek easily and jerked him forward so that he half-stepped, half-fell against his chest. The boy stiffened in surprise, and for a moment Kanda thought--and sort of hoped--that he was going to pull away, maybe try to hit him again for doing something so stupid. But the moment passed, and Allen stayed with his forehead pressed against Kanda’s collar, their chests just barely brushing whenever they breathed.

“Because you weren’t,” he answered, staring at the wall over Allen’s head.

“Huh?”

Kanda rolled his eyes.

“You weren’t free. You were a prisoner to the Order, even more than I was. And you gave up what little leeway you still had when you--” he cut himself off abruptly, clenching his jaw.

He couldn’t say it, but they both knew the moment he was talking about. The moment Allen sacrificed all headway he might have made with their superiors in the order was the moment he used the Ark without permission to send Kanda and Alma somewhere that the Order couldn’t follow. The moment he made the opening Kanda needed to keep his promise, he locked the final chain binding him. It was a debt that Kanda hadn’t had the chance to repay, and there were few things he hated more than being a person’s debt, particularly a person like Allen.

“I had a chance to kill the Fourteenth,” Kanda said instead. “I was supposed to kill him--you--if he took over, and he did, and I let it happen and did nothing. If...if you lost to him for good, it would’ve been my fault. So I decided that, if that time came, I would be the one to do it. The _only_ one.”

“That...is the most backward logic I’ve ever heard,” Allen said incredulously. “If the Fourteenth took over, it’d be nobody’s fault but mine. Kanda, none of this is--”

“I don’t care what you think about it,” Kanda interrupted, fingers curling and uncurling at his sides. “Nobody is going to kill you if the Noah in you wins, nobody but me. I owe you that much.”

“Kanda…”

“That’s why I came back. I might’ve finally gotten away from the Order, but all I could think about was leaving you to face the Fourteenth by yourself. It didn’t feel like freedom. I just went from being obsessed with one person to being obsessed with another one.”

Allen’s heart ached at Kanda’s voice, a rare show of sincerity and emotion that the swordsman would later deny had ever happened. It was hard for him to believe that Kanda had tasted a life free of the Black Order and had still chosen to return to the organization he hated so much, despite his pride and the pain they had caused him, just for Allen. Kanda had no loyalty to the Order, not even now, but still he chose them, because it was only through them that he could find Allen.

“Freedom isn’t real,” the swordsman muttered.

“Maybe not for us,” Allen replied, pulling back slightly to look at him. “But it is for some people.”

Kanda clicked his teeth, and the furrow that Allen was so well acquainted with appeared in his forehead as he shook his head.

“There’s always someone you live for,” Kanda refuted. “You’re never free because there’s always somebody you belong to. It’s a nice fairytale to pretend you chose that person, but you and I both know there’s no choice involved.”

“As depressing as ever…” Allen sighed, dropping his forehead back to Kanda’s chest.

“I don’t know,” he said in response, and one arm lifted of its own accord to slide around Allen’s shoulders almost absently. “I think it’s probably better to live for someone than to just not die for them.”

“Experienced both, have you?”

Allen wasn’t expecting an answer. He knew Kanda tended to talk a big game despite never having played, and sometimes he’d never even bothered to learn the rules. He might have considered his relationship with the Order simply “not dying” for them, but Allen knew that he didn’t do anything for the organization. So imagine his surprise when he was actually given a response. A positive one.

“Yeah, I have.”

Allen stiffened, but he didn’t ask. He knew better than to delve into Kanda’s private affairs; if there was something the swordsman wanted to share--there never was--he would do it on his own terms, without being asked. To push himself forcefully into Kanda’s private matters would be akin to poking a large stick up a dragon’s left nostril: not a move a wise man would make.

“The only freedom we have is death, Allen,” Kanda said, and he finally gave in to his pride, just a little, and sat his chin on the crown of his companion’s head, lip curling slightly at the startled noise he earned. “And it’ll come when it comes.”

“When you kill me.”

Allen didn’t sound afraid of his own words. On the contrary, he sounded almost relieved, and a little piece of Kanda recognized the longing at the prospect of ending the pain and the confusion, and his heart thudded painfully in his chest. Once upon a time, he wouldn’t have believed his own ears. He couldn’t have made himself believe that such a bright and cheerful upstart could carry that kind of darkness in his heart and still wear that stupid smile.

He shifted so that his cheek was now pressed against Allen’s tangle of white hair, and he pulled him a little closer, silently trying to convey what he never would with words. That he understood, that for a moment he could be compassionate, and offer some sort of comfort because he knew what it was like to go without it. After a brief moment, Allen’s fingers reached up and caught the edges of Kanda’s jacket, curling into the material and simply hanging there in equally silent confirmation that he knew what Kanda was trying to tell him.

“When we die,” Kanda corrected.

Because if he had to kill Allen, there would truly be nothing more tying him to that world of blood and demons and the impossible task of separating good and evil, right and wrong. If he had to kill Allen, the blood of another person he loved would be on his hands, and he couldn’t stomach it, or himself, if he continued living after it was over. If he had to kill Allen, he was going to follow his friend once the deed was done.

He wasn’t free. None of them would ever be free. But at least this time he had bound himself to something worthwhile, something that he truly cared about and that he could stand beside. There were no chains connecting him to Allen like there had been between him and the Order. There was but a thin red thread, tied willingly around their wrists, that they could have broken but never would.

 


End file.
